After 8 days of work, historically unproductive, unpopular Congress goes home to campaign

After voting to fund military action against Islamic State, Congress just couldn’t take anymore. The US House announced Thursday an early end to an already shortened fall session so lawmakers could do what they value most: campaign for reelection.

This week, the House and Senate both approved President Barack
Obama’s request to arm so-called "moderate" rebel groups
in Syria as part of a plan to step up the US military campaign
against Islamic State militants. That was about all Congress
could muster.

Though the House was supposed to remain in Washington through the
first week of October, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told
representatives on Thursday that they are off the hook until
after the early November congressional elections. The Senate
followed suit after approving the war funding on Thursday.

The abbreviated fall session means Congress will have only been
on the job in Washington for only about eight days from the end
of July through the middle of November.

Let’s do the math here: The 113th Congress is historically
unproductive in the amount of legislative actions taken. This
is, in part, why the body is perennially rated as unpopular.
Earlier this month, Gallup
found that Congress had a 14-percent approval rating, one of
the lowest in the past 40 years.

In fact, according to Gallup, Congress was recently rated by
Americans as the nationwide institution in which they have the
absolute
least confidence among 17 entities.

For the year 2013, ThinkProgress
found that the US House had 239 days of vacation - considered
days that Congress was not in session. Meanwhile, average workers
in the United States are not guaranteed to have any vacation or
time off for holidays. In comparison, all European Union nations
guarantee workers at least 20 paid days of vacation a year.
Thirteen EU countries also mandate paid holidays off. The US also
has a dismal record regarding guarantees for paid time off, paid
sick days, and maternity
leave.

Some may argue that members of Congress must work even when they
are not in Washington: meetings with constituents or local
community members, running district offices, and even working
other jobs for some. But most make their side money from
investments or businesses they own. In fact, this Congress has
more billionaires than any previous Congress, according
to the most current financial disclosure data available. In
January, it was found that at least 268 of the 534 members of the
113th Congress had an average net worth of $1 million or more.

And all that time spent working when not in Washington?
Current and
former members of Congress attest that, based on the
ever-rising cost of winning elections, a major chunk of time is
spent on “strategic
outreach,” or raising funds for reelection campaigns and
their political parties.

Following the Citizens United Supreme Court case and other
decisions, the flow of money, including source-hidden
“dark money,” has risen to exorbitant levels. The
upcoming 2014 mid-term congressional election is due to hit
all-time highs - even higher than the 2012 campaign which
included a presidential election - for money spent by “dark
money” sources.

As officeholders can raise incredible sums of money - and when a
disaffected US voting population does not turn
out en masse - congressional incumbent reelection
rates are sky-high, especially in the US House.

The implications of all of these factors combined amount to a
political class increasingly cut off from the public, researchers
have found. As RT reported
in April, the first-ever scientific study that analyzes whether
the US is a democracy, rather than an oligarchy, found the
majority of the American public has a “minuscule, near-zero,
statistically non-significant impact upon public policy”
compared to the wealthy.

While “Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic
governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and
association,” the authors said the data implicate “the
nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian
Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences
of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups
are controlled for, the preferences of the average American
appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically
non-significant impact upon public policy."